More About Baby Lydia

I was going to wait till March 1st to summarize our February and talk more about Baby Lydia, but that seems so far away with all that's been going on. I feel like it will be the longest post of all my long posts (at least in pictures) if I wait.

PLUS . . . she lost her umbilical cord scabby grossness yesterday, and she had her first "real" bath at home today, and those seem like milestones worth recording promptly.

Speaking of umbilical cord, this experience was much better than with Everett's umbilical cord. He was born when most doctors were still recommending using alcohol swabs (now they tell you to leave it be). I don't know if it was that or it would have happened anyway, but his got so stinky (putrid, even), and it seemed like it took forever to fall off. Probably couldn't have been more than 2 or 3 weeks, and she's already almost 2 weeks old, but I guess time's going by faster with her. Anyway, hers just dried up and fell off! No stink, no fuss. Nice.

I caught myself a few times hoping the umbilical cord would fall off, so we wouldn't have to worry about it, so we could give her a bath, so it wouldn't look gross. But then I remembered how short the time with it would be, and I didn't really want to rush that time.

Video chatting with Auntie Katie on February 10th, our first day home from the hospital.

So, about Baby Lydia.

She's still sleeping a lot, most of the time. She only cries when she needs to eat. Sometimes I think she's crying for some other reason (she can't possibly be hungry right now!), but I feed her anyway (sometimes after trying other things, like Brian rocking, bouncing, swaying, burping), and that's all it takes, more milk.

When we went to see Dr. Patterson for the first time, four days after she was born, she had dropped 10 ounces. She was down from 8 lbs 8 oz to 7 lbs 14 oz. This is not unusual, but it's on the high side of normal weight loss, so they wanted us to come back a few days later to weigh her again to make sure she was gaining weight.

In the mean time, all of her poops after the meconium were pure liquid, and we started getting concerned. So the doctor told us to come in that day, a day earlier, to weigh her and make sure she was gaining despite the liquid poops. 

Brian brought her in, they weighed her, and she was back to her birth weight! Dr. Patterson said he'd never known a baby to gain 10 ounces in two days and called me a rockstar! Haha. Dr. Patterson tends to exaggerate. But I got a kick out of it anyway. 

She doesn't spit up much. There's a dribble here and there. Three times, she's lost a good part of her meal (all in the last couple days). But I feel like three times in two weeks is still pretty infrequent. I think this is one of the reasons she gained so much weight. She doesn't let much milk go!

Our first visit with Dr. Patterson, he also said she looked like she was a week late. Brian thinks he said he came to that conclusion by looking at her feet? Like, her feet were curled in a certain way? I think he meant because of all her peeling skin and cracked skin on the top of her feet.

Either way, I don't doubt his conclusion. Two of our ultrasounds predicted her due date as February 1st, and I estimated her due date based on conception as February 3rd. So a week late is about right. But I'm glad we settled on February 6th. It was very good for my outlook at they end. Two days late feels soooo much better than 10 days late (what I supposedly was with Everett).

She's been sleeping well at night, three or even four hours in a stretch. This isn't to say I'm not sleep deprived. It's hard getting on newborn schedule again, especially with a 2.75 year old. We've been trying to get him to go to sleep a bit earlier, so we can go to sleep earlier. But he's been going to sleep LATER! I don't know if it's the newness of it all, the excitement, feeling left out because Lydia's still in the living room with us, but we've been having a tough nighttime routine with him.

And then, when we get him to sleep, we go to sleep. And when she wakes me up at night, I take her to the living room and nurse her in the AWESOME La-Z-boy we got from the Hunters. Until a few days ago, I kept falling asleep in the recliner after feeding her, which left me feeling really frustrated and sleep deprived. Lately, I've been alert enough to feed her then go back to bed. Like I said, she's been sleeping great, and her feedings sort of line up where it only feels like I have one middle of the night feeding (plus one a little past my bedtime, 11:00, and one a little earlier than I'd prefer waking up, 5:00 or 6:00).

Everett's basically my mini-me, so when I say I think Lydia looks more like Brian, it's just because she doesn't look 100% like me. I think she has Brian's ears, but with a little more lobe. When she was first born, I thought she had my ears too (like E), but then I realized they weren't my ears, they were just ears that are very familiar to me.

She has a dimple in one cheek, like Brian does.

And her nose is certainly different than Everett's. It kind of swoops a bit.

Her hair is darker and more abundant that Everett's was.

We'll just have to see how she grows to see who she really looks like.

Our parents keep remarking on how different it is seeing Lydia so much as a newborn. When Everett was born, we lived in San Jose. We didn't move back to Atascadero until he was almost 3 months old, and they only got to come visit us a few times.

Now, our parents get to see Lydia every couple days. Plus, they all got to visit a couple times when we were in the hospital. They got to see her right when she was born (Everett was born at 3 am, and I was exhausted, so we made them come back to meet him in the morning).

She's such a little peanut. Everett never really fit in newborn sized clothes or diapers. She still does. We've been putting her in some 0-3 things too, but she still (especially in pants) fits best in newborn.

Everett's been so sweet with her. He loves her, and when he wakes up in the morning or after nap or when he comes home from Grandma's, his first question is, "where's Baby Sister?!"

We still have to be super careful, though. He'll squish her or poker her. He doesn't know his strength or how fragile she is. And he cannot help himself messing with her swings and vibrating chair. They have buttons, and he NEEDS to push them! He also loves to sit in the swings, but luckily he's only done that when she's not in them.

She makes him seem like a huge, giant boy with a massive head and thick, dense limbs. He's not. He's always been a bit bellow average in weight. But she's just so teeny!

And they use the same changing table, so that's always weird. Going from changing a tiny baby there to a big "preschooler."

baby's first trip to Home Depot (Target came next)

baby's first jean ensemble

Until next time! Excuse me while I go get ready for bed at 8 pm.